


Ropes and Leather

by catnipquills



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlets, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Slight Smut, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-11 13:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7894240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catnipquills/pseuds/catnipquills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yesterday, home had been his ship – the way it had been for every yesterday in the past 300 years. Today, it’s her. (And he vows silently, he’ll make her every tomorrow for the rest of his existence.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a bit mad about these two. Some random spurts of inspiration - mostly quite short. I hope you'll enjoy them anyway.

**Prompt (1): Desperate, Bruised (Post Season 5)  
**

After everything, Killian seemed to have a hard time to stop touching her. The brush of fingers at her elbow, a hand on the small of her back, the barest of kisses to her temple. Emma breathed between those contacts of skin, made them the rhythm that she kept functioning to. It would only work for so long, Emma knew. But Killian kept doing it for hours at a stretch Like silent words: _I love you._ (Over and over and over).

Maybe, Emma thought, he was reassuring himself that was is real, that they were both still here. She feels unhinged, but somehow just steady enough to calm Killian’s storm for him. Her reassuring smiles were small things, but Killian saw them. Emma counted the way his shoulders eased just a little quite the victory.  

When they were finally blissfully alone, the calmness neither of them really felt collapsed like a house of cards right over their heads. Emma heard him closing the door of the house behind them. She wandered a few steps into the space and tried hard not to remember when they had stood right here a little while ago.

Killian was still behind her. Emma breathed in once and in one fluid movement crowded Killian against the door. He took the force of her embrace in a stride and yielded were she pushed. He was on the same page in an instant. His searing kiss told that much.

Emma pressed close, felt half as if she wanted to crawl right into him.  She could have wept at the warmth of him.  “Shht,” Hook breathed against her lips, a sliver of space between them when they came up for air – too much for Emma’s taste. She surged forward again and he met her half-way. His lips parted for her easily.

There was the gentle pressure of his fingers that had snuck in under her top, stroking a patch of skin just above her waistline. He tried to slow her down, calm her uneasiness. But she didn’t feel like soft and gentle.

" _Emma_ ,” he tried again, but she was having none of it. Instead, she pressed closer and demanded another kiss, and another and another then – Emma only yielded to his gentleness when the exhaustion was staring to ache in her bones. The mere act of standing upright – even with Hook talking most of her weight – seemed impossible to her mind, her body barely hanging on.

She wanted to cry, but a hoarse laugh slipped from her instead. Only then did she realize that her sight was blurring steadily and maybe she was crying already. Kilian touched fingers to her cheeks, wiping tear tracks away, his arm dragging her close as he pressed his lips to the crown of her head, saying nothing at all.

(She fell asleep like this – in his arms – or perhaps she simply blocked out getting to bed. But when she startled awake later, not aware of how long it had been, Killian was right there next to her, an arm over her waist that anchored her to reality.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Prompt (2): Anger**

  
_One._

  
His anger is like ice. Like the ocean frozen over. It’s when his smile vanishes behind a nightmare-mask. It’s _Captain Hook_ – not Emma’s Hook, not – “Killian”, she breathes and his fist unclenches slowly.

His eyes find her. They’re clear, always clear. He doesn’t lose himself in anger. It’s like looking into the eye of a storm – his anger, the calm of it unsettling. “Still a bloody crocodile,” he says on an exhale and lets her pick up the pieces of the ruined part of his mind.

 

_Two._

  
It’s a default setting. The mistrust of everything and everyone. But there is another emotion at the bottom of that behavioral pattern. It’s because she’s angry.

  
Angry at her parents for leaving her, angry about her own stupidity, the nativity - angry that she never had anything much to call her own, angry at a stupid pirate – “Come on then, Swan.” She might punch him. (And maybe for once that would actually make her feel better.)

He doesn’t try to soothe her, but fuels the fire somewhere low in her stomach. She doesn’t punch him in the end.

 

***

**Prompt (3): Change**

  
It’s a long way from tying him to a tree to feeling a shudder go through his whole body, when she rags her tongue over the roof of his mouth. She inches closer, trapping him against the back of the couch – he doesn’t seem to mind and she loves it, loves the feeling of boneless warmth.

“Let me,” she had asked and he’d complied readily. The curse was oddly soft on his lips, his mouth slack around a moan. It feels like power to make him tremble like this.

Her hand skimmed his buckle, once, twice. Killian laughed hoarsely. “ _Tease_ ,” he told her against her cheek. “Bloody tea-“, he clamped his mouth shut when she made true on her promise.

 

***

**Prompt (4): Moments**

_Emma  
_

When he draws the attention of a giant to him in order to save her, Emma thinks briefly – with surprise so sharp it’s almost shock – he has the makings of a hero. (Which is odd in a pirate, isn’t it?) Only, there is very little heroic about the desire for revenge. And that’s the only thing she sees in his eyes.

*

She lies to him when they climb. Emma is far from a truth-teller on a good day, but with him the words twist on her tongue. She lies from the very start. Somehow, - and that’s the only excuse she has for acting the way she does - Emma knows that he is _dangerous._

*

Maybe she doesn’t get him at all or maybe Emma does understand too much, maybe she’s terrified. Maybe all of the above. They all seem good excuses to leave him in the giant’s treasure chamber. (He’s a pirate. She’s sure he can pick a lock.)

*

She remembers the Jell-O much later, so much later that it’s ridiculous in fact (But better to remember that detail than the bruises on his body) – and she makes him try every food she can think of. (Funnily enough, he doesn’t seem to have much of a sweet-tooth.)

*

When they first meet, he pretends to be someone else. She sees right through him. But she was pretending all her life, she had become so good that it probably had become her very nature. She never counted on him to see through her.

 

_Killian_

He doesn’t mean to hold onto her hand until it becomes impossible – he balances his weight forward on the tip of his toes, he’s just shy of jumping up – but he does it anyway. He is vulnerable, he is open to her and his heart is breaking. It’s too late for regrets now.

*

Pirate isn’t a bad word per say. It means freedom and the endless sea, chasing a heart’s desires, chasing dreams. Hook quite enjoys this way of life, thank you very much. Then why do David’s words sting so much _? (You’re only a pirate.)_

*

Pan offers him a deal. He doesn’t take it. It’s only the first of many offers. It’s not even the best. But they all forget: He’s a pirate. He understands freedom, free will better than most. And he knows that he wants her, but only if she comes to him willingly.

*

The hardest part isn’t even convincing her that his actions are genuine. It’s convincing himself. (He only fights for himself after all.)         

*

He tells himself that his actions make him an opportunist. And if that’s just a pretty synonym for “villain” he doesn’t care either. Not much.


End file.
